Plans

So, many numerous updates since the last post.

I am no longer double majoring in Philosophy and Journalism. I decided the Communications department was more trouble working with than it is worth, so I dropped that major, officially declared my Logic minor, and I'm working on my application to graduate in April with a Philosophy degree. This semester I'm only taking three classes: Statistics, Accounting, and Thai. The first two are for preparation for a possible business school future, and the third is mostly for fun.

Also, this probably isn't news to anyone who probably reads this, but I've been engaged for about three weeks. Here's the whole story:

Nathan and I had been in each other's peripheral vision since April of this year. A mutual friend of ours was live-blogging General Conference via Facebook statuses, and we both joined in. I sent him a friend request, he added me, and we occasionally chatted/commented on each other's posts for a number of months. I told Nathan about a week before coming to Provo that I wanted to hang out. We went and got lunch my first Saturday back in Provo, were both thoroughly awkward, but continued to talk/see each other. It wasn't long after that we both realized that we really, really liked each other. We were both very attracted to each other's intellectual pursuit, bibliophilia, and nerdy humor, among many other things. And then we realized that this is what happens when you find the person you're supposed to marry. So on a Tuesday morning, sitting in my car outside of the Provo Temple after we spent time inside, he asked me to marry him. And I said yes. And then we sat there, enjoying the surrealness of it all, asking each other, "so, did that really just happen?"

We are getting married on December 28th in the Dallas, Texas Temple.

I think the biggest thing I've learned this year isn't the best door approach when tracting, or how to calm down an angry patient on the phone, or how to calculate z-scores in statistics. The biggest thing I've learned this year is that Heavenly Father allows us to experience really difficult things, including huge changes of seemingly faultless plans, so we know how to appreciate the things He gives us instead. And He always manages to pull through with things we didn't know would be better.

Most of all, I'm so glad to have learned through experience that God plans things according to a wider paradigm than my own.